Doing Creative Work from Your Political Body: A Guide and Process for Practice-led Research

A primer on an embodied mode of practice-led research for professionals, educators, students and researchers

This experimental guidebook invites creatives to integrate their experience as an embodied―and thus racialized, gendered and classed―being into their practices. By making tangible the theoretical, the book posits, creatives can become sharper sociopolitical agents.
Building upon design research, Black critical thought and autoethnography, the approach to practice-led research outlined in this book was developed over a decade, across studios, classrooms and a research lab. The book functions in three interlocking ways: the framework equips readers with language to articulate the theory informing their practices; the demonstration models ways of working with theory; and the guide provides a sequence of hands-on prompts to attend to the inner workings of their crafts.
Myriam D. Diatta (born 1990) is a Senegal-born, Denmark-based designer and independent scholar. Her practice focuses on interiority at the intersection of politically engaged work and creative knowledge production.